He grew up in New York City, but light pollution be damned: Neil deGrasse Tyson had his head in the stars from a young age. The Bronx High School of Science grad is now among the most prominent scientists in America and serves as director of the Upper West Side’s Hayden Planetarium. The “urban astrophysicist” has written numerous books and is currently working on a reboot of Carl Sagan’s beloved TV series “Cosmos.” This is his cosmic New York.

“The Secretariat building’s architectural slab happens to share the proportions of the famous black monolith in the 1968 Stanley Kubrick film ‘2001: A Space Odyssey.’ If the short side is length ‘1,’ then the medium side is length ‘4,’ and the long side is length ‘9.’ ”

2. Church of St. Paul the Apostle, 405 W. 59th St., at Ninth Avenue

“Ninety feet above the floor is a dark blue ceiling with the night sky painted on it. The stars on this particular sky were the ones visible at midnight on Jan. 25, 1885, the day the church was dedicated. The constellations are accurately portrayed, and — dare I say it? — more realistic than those of Grand Central Terminal.”

3. Murphy Center at Asphalt Green, 555 E. 90th St., between York and East End avenues

“The shape is called a catenary. It’s a very strict mathematical shape that’s the most stable arc that exists. If you hold a string at both ends, [it makes this shape.] As gravity tries to pull this down, the force is distributed across the entire arc.”

4. Grand Central Terminal, 42nd Street at Park Avenue

The famous ceiling is riddled with mistakes.For starters, the constellations are backward. A plaque tries to explain the goof by claiming, “Said to be backwards, [the stars are] actually seen from a point of view outside the solar system.” Says Tyson, “Alpha Centauri, the star system nearest to the sun, is 6,700 times farther from Earth than Pluto is. So just leaving the solar system will not fundamentally alter your view of the stars in our galaxy, and it certainly does not allow you to look at the constellations from behind.”

“At 1 p.m. on the summer solstice, the sun reaches an altitude of 73 degrees in the sky, and its rays align exactly with the short, steep side of the triangle. In winter, the sun’s path across the sky is low; its rays align exactly with the lower side of the triangle at noon on the winter solstice. At noon on the spring and autumn equinoxes, the sun’s elevation is intermediate, aligning exactly with the upper leg of the triangle.”

6. Atlas statue, Fifth Avenue at 50th Street

“Like most depictions of Atlas, this one shows him carrying the world in the form of an armillary sphere. Laid across Atlas’ shoulders is a wide, curved beam that displays a frieze of the traditional symbols for Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter [hidden behind Atlas’ neck], Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The sculpture was conceived and designed without any reference to Pluto, which was discovered and named in 1930. In this respect, the sculpture must have seemed embarrassingly out of date at its dedication in 1937. Pluto’s been demoted to a dwarf planet now, so the statue is right back in style.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson’s top five facts about Manhattanhenge

1. Manhattanhenge, which he coined, refers to the semi-annual phenomenon when the setting sun precisely aligns with the Manhattan street grid.

2. It falls around May 28 and July 12 each year.

3. The best streets to view it from are the major crosstown arteries: 14th, 23rd, 34th, 42nd and 57th streets.

4. The Manhattan grid is rotated 30 degrees east from geographic north; had it been true north, the Manhattan-henge dates would fall on the equinoxes.

5. ”I was watching it on 42nd Street, and some elderly woman behind me said, ‘Sonny, down in front.’ ” says Tyson. “My urge was to say, ‘You wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for me.’ But I didn’t.”